Farm workers resort to the use of pickaxes and a pneumatic drill to unearth parsnips from the ground during the freezing winter of 1947. The period between late January and early March that year was one of the iciest on record in the UK, described as being "phenomenally cold and dull" by the Royal Meteorological Society's Weather Magazine: "Snow lay for the whole month over the greater part of the country … There was severe drifting with complete dislocation of railway and road traffic." Ground temperatures fell to -21C at Farnborough in Hampshire, while at Kew, Nottingham and Edgbaston, there was no sun on 22 of the month's 28 days.